Monday, December 10, 2007

Who would have thought it?

Who would have thought it that we find ourselves even partially in agreement with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, shown in this Reuters picture gesturing in a characteristic manner.

Gaddafi is attending the EU-Africa Summit with intentions to travel on to France and Spain "after several decades of not being welcome". One wonders whether he really is all that welcome even now.

What a character that man is, to be sure. He used the Summit to attack the UN, insisting that it is a dictatorship and has no right to preach democracy. As a matter of fact, we had not realized that the UN was preaching all that much democracy, spending as it does a great deal of time, pacifying and financing dictators and attacking the West, particularly the United States, and, of course, Israel.

Escorted by muscular female bodyguards dressed in desert-colored khaki and caps, Gaddafi criticized the current United Nations structure in which five countries -- the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia -- have veto powers.

He said the U.N. General Assembly, at which virtually all of the world's states are represented, should be the executive body of the global organization, not the smaller Security Council.

"Why are we asking for democracy in countries, when there is dictatorship in the U.N. (and) if we can't establish democracy in the world parliament," he told academics and diplomats.

Well, of course, the UN is not the world parliament though it would like to come close to it. But then how would Colonel Gaddafi know about parliaments?

It is undoubtedly true that it is undemocratic and unaccountable. It does not have as much power as a dictator, such as Colonel Gaddafi does, but whenever it acquires any power it misuses it.

I rather take to this idea of 191 countries in the General Assembly making decisions and creating policies. Nothing will ever be decided on. Excellent. Will it be more democratic? After all, a very large proportion of those countries are not democratic themselves so their legates are not precisely representative of the people and the countries. And that is before we even mention such matters as freedom and human rights.